teadiest shower rolls in globules from the crisp, unmoistened leaves
of the nasturtium.

"Spinsters are so fussy," she deplored, comfortably. "Just because
they have no beaux themselves, they can't bear to see a girl have a
caller now and then."

"My dear, keep up a slight acquaintance with truth," besought Elvira;
"a caller now and then would give me a chance to mend my stockings and
to get to bed by nine o'clock a few nights in the week. As it is, I
have to idle my time away evening after evening, sitting and grinning
at your flocks and herds of young men until I am so sleepy I have to
go and coax pa to drop a big slipper on the floor overhead, to
indicate that it's bedtime. Hazel and Marion and Rosamond encouraged
only a moderate number of beaux, and them only until they naturally
paired off with the right ones and could scat the rest off. But you
hang on to them all. There is hardly an evening you don't have from
one to five on hand, though you surely can't want them."

Eulalie giggled joyously.

"I do want them--every tinker of them. Poor old girl, you never knew
the fun of keeping a lot of men in a continual squirm. However, I
think possibly what you call the 'right one' is bobbing up."

"Most fervently do I hope so," sighed Elvira.

The strain of excessive chaperoning was wearing upon her.

"Your sister looks tired," a late acquisition of Eulalie's made
observation, compassionately, one evening, seeing Elvira nod over her
uncongenial Battenberg-ing by the piano lamp.

"Yes--she's such an early-to-bed crank," Eulalie cheerfully replied,
"and I suppose it isn't a lot of fun to sit over there alone doing
Battenberg with us chatting just out of good hearing range."

Hugh Griswold had been blessed with a good, old-fashioned mother, and
among the precepts bequeathed her son had been one not so distant of
kinship from the Golden Rule:

"Treat everybody well."

"Suppose we move into good hearing range, then?" he suggested.

"Oh, you can go, if you want to." Eulalie's eyebrows curved into brown
velvet crescents. "I'm very well satisfied here. Did I tell you Major
Yates was going to bring me a pair of guinea pigs to-morrow?"

The next time Hugh Griswold called he brought his uncle, an elderly
widower, with a bald, intellectual forehead and large billows of
whisker. The uncle beamed upon Eulalie with fatherly benignance, and
then established friendly communication with Elvira.

"I thought it might brisk thi